Hycroft Drills Its Best Hole in 40 Years, and Five First Nations Buy Into Coastal GasLink

Happy Tuesday! Pour the double-double, because Hycroft just drilled the best hole of its forty-year life, and that's not even the only "first time in decades" story in today's edition.

A Nevada mine older than most of its own drill rigs just posted a career-best assay, five B.C. First Nations became part owners of the pipe feeding Canada's biggest LNG project, and a Saskatchewan brine deposit just booked the province's first-ever bankable lithium reserves.

Gold's holding just under $4,190 as the dollar softens ahead of tomorrow's CPI print, oil's giving back some of its Hormuz-risk gains, and the TSX Venture is having a rough Tuesday regardless.

Pour the coffee: there's a lot to get through.

As of Oct 13, 2026, afternoon ET · Source: Kitco, Trading Economics, Investing.com, Cameco/UxC

🥇 Gold (spot): $4,186.90/oz 📈
🥈 Silver (spot): $60.21/oz 📈
🔌 Copper: $6.68/lb 📉
☢️ Uranium (U₃O₈ spot): $89.60/lb 📈
🛢️ WTI Crude: $91.85/bbl 📉
🔥 Natural Gas (Henry Hub): $3.17/MMBtu 📈
🍁 TSX-V Composite: 877.84 📉
💵 U.S. Dollar (DXY): 102.30 📉

Gold's firming as the dollar and yields pull back ahead of tomorrow's CPI print, oil's handing back some of its Hormuz-risk gains, and the Venture is getting dragged lower even on a day gold's green: proof the juniors are trading their own tape right now. Uranium is still showing September's month-end print, so read it as a direction, not gospel, until this week's indicator lands.

What happened. Hycroft Mining ($HYMC ( ▼ 6.97% )) released assays from hole H26D-6175A at its Vortex system in Nevada: 19.6 metres averaging 30.49 g/t gold and 1,726.72 g/t silver (53.51 g/t AuEq), including a 1.7-metre interval at 347.07 g/t gold and 9,526.36 g/t silver. The company calls it the best hole in the property's more than 40-year history, with visible gold throughout.

Why it happened. Hycroft has spent two field seasons chasing the Vortex and Brimstone silver systems below its old heap-leach pits, and this hole extends the high-grade zone further west and south than anything drilled before it. Management thinks the alteration style suggests they're closing in on whatever's actually feeding the system.

What it means for your position. Hycroft has a rough history: serial dilution, a bankruptcy restructuring, more promises than production. Treat "best hole ever" with the usual skepticism. But a result like this at a past-producing site with existing infrastructure is exactly the kind of thing that can re-rate a stock fast if it's followed up, and exactly the kind of headline that can get ahead of itself if it isn't. This is exploration, not a resource, and the company says so itself.

👉 Read the full story

Forget drill bits for a second, the tech story today is in the processing plant. Grounded Lithium (TSXV: GRD) released a pre-feasibility study on its Kindersley Lithium Project in Saskatchewan, the first NI 43-101 lithium reserves ever declared in the province.

So what. A reserve is a reserve, and a real one in a province that's never had one is worth noting. Just don't confuse "first bankable lithium reserves in Saskatchewan" with "economic lithium mine in Saskatchewan" until the capital cost comes down or the lithium price goes up.

👉 Dig in

LaFleur Minerals ($LFLR.CSE ( ▼ 6.15% )) signed a definitive gold and silver purchase agreement with Ocean Partners UK Limited, covering all the doré from its planned Swanson bulk sample once it's processed at the company's Beacon Gold Mill in Val-d'Or. The deal comes with an option to draw up to US$5 million in working-capital advances starting January 2027: unsecured, no warrants, no equity, priced off LBMA gold and silver with the advance charged at SOFR plus 7.50%. It also means walking away from the non-binding Trafigura term sheet announced back in April.

Disclosure, because we always give you one: this release is also running today through MiningNewsWire and IBN's InvestorNewsBreaks, the paid-awareness network our Promo Radar watches. That doesn't make the offtake deal fake (Ocean Partners is a real metals trading house and the terms are filed in black and white), but it does mean somebody's paying to make sure you saw the headline today.

So what. A non-dilutive offtake facility is a genuinely sound structure for a company trying to restart a mill without printing more paper. Just know the volume you're seeing on this one isn't purely organic.

👉 See the details

What happened. TC Energy ($TRP.TSX ( ▼ 0.66% )) closed the first of two planned Indigenous investment transactions on Coastal GasLink, giving the Haisla Nation, Halfway River First Nation, McLeod Lake Indian Band, Saulteau First Nations and West Moberly First Nations an economic interest, through FN CGL Pipeline Limited Partnership, in the entity that holds TC Energy's limited partner stake in the pipeline. A second transaction with additional First Nations is expected to close in Q4.

Why it happened. Coastal GasLink feeds 2.1 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas to LNG Canada, and Phase 2 is set to nearly double that capacity. TC Energy has been working toward Indigenous equity participation on this corridor since 2022; this is that plan finally landing.

What it means for your position. This is a predictable-cash-flow story, not a growth one: the Nations get long-term, stable returns, and TC Energy gets to point to real reconciliation economics on its flagship gas corridor right as LNG Canada ramps toward Phase 2. For anyone holding TRP for the yield, it's one more brick in the "this pipeline isn't going anywhere" wall.

👉 Read the full story

Enerflex ($EFXT ( ▼ 6.43% )) landed a contract to design, build and assemble more than 1 gigawatt of behind-the-meter, low-emission natural gas power generation for an unnamed large-scale North American data centre developer. Stack that on the 450 MW deal it announced October 1, and the company's behind-the-meter backlog is now over 1.75 gigawatts, with deliveries running out to 2028. Management has authorized roughly $100 million to build out its Engineered Systems capacity to keep up.

So what. Power-for-data-centres is turning into its own category of energy-patch story, and oilfield-services names with gas-turbine and reciprocating-engine expertise are getting the first calls. Enerflex not disclosing a dollar figure on the contract itself is a bit of a tell: this is a backlog story, not a margin story, not yet.

👉 Dig in

Source Rock Royalties ($SRRRF ( ▲ 0.98% )) paid $4 million cash for a 0.75% gross overriding royalty across about 126,000 acres of Alberta heavy oil leases, currently producing roughly 3,300 bbl/d from one formation with upside from the Clearwater, Bluesky and Pekisko zones underneath. The unnamed operator is on the hook to drill ten horizontal wells by September 2028 or owe Source Rock non-performance damages, and Source Rock could owe the operator up to $1.2 million back if production climbs past 4,000 to 5,000 bbl/d.

So what. It's a small, quiet deal, but it's exactly Source Rock's playbook: non-dilutive, cash-funded, and it grows the company's royalty acreage by more than 60% in one bite. Nobody's getting rich off this headline tomorrow, but it's the kind of deal that compounds.

👉 See the details

Hycroft's drill program has been running, one way or another, for over forty years: pits, leach pads, two bankruptcies and one very patient shareholder base. On Tuesday, the latest hole was still the best one they've ever pulled out of the ground.

Keep your grades high and your dilution low. See you tomorrow. ⛏️